Brown Watches Replay Once, Then Decides To Get Over It

September 25, 1998|By Paul Sullivan, Tribune Staff Writer.

Brant Brown checked into his Houston hotel room after the long flight from Milwaukee on Wednesday and tuned in a horror show on late-night TV.

The show in question was ESPN's "SportsCenter," and the scary part came when they showed a lowlight of Brown camping under a fly ball off the bat of Geoff Jenkins in the bottom of the ninth inning of the Cubs-Brewers game.

Everyone knows what happened next: The drop heard 'round the world.

"I wasn't scared to watch it," Brown said. "I wanted to see it. I just saw it once and then I turned it off. My fiance will tell you I'm a strong and stubborn individual. This is not going to beat me. One play and one season and one day . . . it's only one occurrence."

Brown's error resounded around the wild-card race. In New York, manager Bobby Valentine heard about the Cubs' loss before the Mets-Expos game when a fan listening on a radio yelled, "He dropped the ball . . . he dropped the ball!"

"I tried to make like it was no big deal, like I don't care, I'm not listening," Valentine said. "But I couldn't."

But the Mets went on to lose Wednesday night's game, and Brown said "I took a big, deep sigh" after hearing the final score.

Brown obviously was dejected immediately after the game. But with the help of close friends Kerry Wood and Terry Adams and fiance Jennifer Stephens, he eventually snapped out of it.

"By the time I got to the plane, it wasn't that bad," he said. "The guys were laughing and giggling. Everyone gave me hugs and pats. I couldn't tell you how many pats I got last night. (Wood and Adams) and I had some guys over to the room, and we sat and talked baseball, watched the Angels play Texas. Hey, this is not going to beat me. I'm not going to let it beat me."

Friends and relatives called all day Thursday to offer Brown words of encouragement, including the man they call Mr. Cub.

"Ernie Banks called me and said, `We've all been there and done that,' " Brown said. "He told me, `Don't worry, we all love you.' "

Brown knows he probably will hear comparisons between him and other players who made notable mistakes, but the Bill Buckner comparison bothers him the most.

"You can tag me all you want," he said. "But someone dropped a `Buckner' tag on me, and I wasn't appreciative of that. (His error) came in the World Series. We're tied (in the wild-card race). If we lose it by one game, people will say, `If he'd have caught it, we'd be even.' But there were a lot more things that went on that (led to the loss) than one fly ball. There was a lot of action before that happened."